


The Neighbour of the Beast

by gardnerhill



Series: 221b Ficlets by Gardnerhill [39]
Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: 221B Ficlet, Community: watsons_woes, Gen, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-12-03 03:08:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11523267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: Sorry, lady, this is the house of the Six Dwarves.





	The Neighbour of the Beast

**Author's Note:**

> For the 2017 July Watson's Woes Promptfest prompt #16, the image located [at this site](https://68.media.tumblr.com/65ba55e3e3c2bb35a41cfcdf099a8c40/tumblr_opnyy40XTZ1rhmmnao1_1280.jpg).

In mid-June 1896 we began to receive a surge of new visitors at our door – scrawny-looking men, anxious-looking women, corpulent people of both sexes – all asking for me rather than Sherlock Holmes. “I’m here to see the doctor,” was how Mrs. Hudson relayed the requests from our influx of visitors.

At first I was naturally flattered that I’d been touted as a physician so highly somewhere that I would suddenly gain a bumper crop of new patients. However, the Mystery of the Clamoring Visitors was cleared up when several of them brandished a clipping from a recent publication – an advertisement for some quack exercise touted as a cure-all for the usual ills (obesity, impotence, women’s ailments), being peddled by some jumped-up snake-oil seller – at an address on Baker Street one digit removed from our own.

Holmes laughed at my anger and consternation, but changed his tune when he was mistaken for my nurse several times. But the final indignity – the one that drove Holmes to demand that Mrs. Hudson adorn our front door with a blackly-lettered sign giving clear plain directions to the charlatan’s door – was when a particularly stout man assumed that Holmes himself was the exercise apparatus and had simply sat on my friend whilst he was lost in thought in his chair; I laughed till I hurt badly.


End file.
